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> Whether the conditions in a contract have been met is very often a matter of huge debate - this is what "law suits" are about. Exactly. While laws and contr

by _rpd 10y ago

> Whether the conditions in a contract have been met is very often a matter of huge debate - this is what "law suits" are about. Exactly. While laws and contract terms are written in natural language, this is an AI-complete problem. Not to say we won't solve AGI or important parts of automated legal dispute resolution, but the blockchain and even blockchain-based distributed computing is incidental.

libertymcateer 10y ago
> While laws and contract terms are written in natural language, this is an AI-complete problem. Beautiful way of putting it. I want to take it one step further, however: While laws and contracts are written for human consumption this will be a problem. In the same way that DRM is always going to have to allow for users to view video with analog eyeballs and hear sound with analog ears, if laws and contracts are to be sensible to humans, they must be written in something a lot like normal language. I always argue that legalese is something more than normal language, but the point is that even in this stance, the interpreter is still a human being with semantic judgment faculties, and not a compiler or run-time interpreter. You know why I do not anticipate that this will ever come to pass? The people in power that write laws and enforce contracts are human beings.
- _rpd 10y ago
  Yes, even if a legal subsystem is instantiated in which parties agree to abide by "programmatic contracts," the vast majority of people will not willingly use it. When an extremely precise condition is set, some party will eventually attempt to game the system (obeying the letter, but not spirit). It is in the interests of most parties to have some contract terms be ambiguous exactly as anti-gaming hedges. Ethereum's DAO debacle is a great example. It wasn't a hacker exploiting a bug, it was the system working exactly as intended. As soon as you are in a situation where one of the parties protests that "strict compliance with the terms is not enough, common sense must apply" your situation is AI-complete.
taejo 10y ago
Not only are contracts written in natural language, they are about events in the natural world. The blockchain cannot know whether you delivered 100 bushels of corn to the counterparty, what the quality of the corn was, whether you were responsible for the damage to your car or somebody else, whether the house you built is up to code, or any of the thousands of other conditions that are the subjects of everyday contracts.

by _rpd 10y ago

libertymcateer 10y ago

> While laws and contract terms are written in natural language, this is an AI-complete problem. Beautiful way of putting it. I want to take it one step further, however: While laws and contracts are written for human consumption this will be a problem. In the same way that DRM is always going to have to allow for users to view video with analog eyeballs and hear sound with analog ears, if laws and contracts are to be sensible to humans, they must be written in something a lot like normal language. I always argue that legalese is something more than normal language, but the point is that even in this stance, the interpreter is still a human being with semantic judgment faculties, and not a compiler or run-time interpreter. You know why I do not anticipate that this will ever come to pass? The people in power that write laws and enforce contracts are human beings.

_rpd 10y ago
Yes, even if a legal subsystem is instantiated in which parties agree to abide by "programmatic contracts," the vast majority of people will not willingly use it. When an extremely precise condition is set, some party will eventually attempt to game the system (obeying the letter, but not spirit). It is in the interests of most parties to have some contract terms be ambiguous exactly as anti-gaming hedges. Ethereum's DAO debacle is a great example. It wasn't a hacker exploiting a bug, it was the system working exactly as intended. As soon as you are in a situation where one of the parties protests that "strict compliance with the terms is not enough, common sense must apply" your situation is AI-complete.

taejo 10y ago

Not only are contracts written in natural language, they are about events in the natural world. The blockchain cannot know whether you delivered 100 bushels of corn to the counterparty, what the quality of the corn was, whether you were responsible for the damage to your car or somebody else, whether the house you built is up to code, or any of the thousands of other conditions that are the subjects of everyday contracts.